Scandinavian

Location:

My boyfriend and I were meeting our architect Fred for a meeting to discuss the changes we are making to our flat and after the formal meeting we decided to get some food. We wanted to go to the Riding House Café first, but when we arrived there on Saturday at 11.30 all the tables had been taken and the waiting time was 1h, and as we did not want to wait, we continued walking on the same street hoping to find something equally good. A few meters further down from Riding House Café one of us spotted the Scandinavian Kitchen which looked nice and bright (in red) from the outside and as I had read a lot about it and as my Finnish friend Risto said it was one of his favourite places in London, I decided to get everyone in there and try it out.

Maija rated:

Location:

I had huge expectations for this place, as I had just been to Noma and my friend Ian was telling me this place does European food with a Scandinavian twist, so I thought it would be a bit like Noma, but it was not. The restaurant was opened in 2010 and is called North Road because the historic Great North Road began its course at Smithfield (which is where the restaurant is located) in Pre-Roman times, heading North, and the name should imply to you English food with a Northern twist I guess. The main chef who generated a lot of excitement was Christoffer Hruskova (who is Danish and headed some other restaurants in London before opening North Road, and hence another reason why some people would compare this to the Danish Noma) but he left this summer, but still the restaurant maintains 1 Michelin star.

Maija rated:

Location:

This week was the week of the "E" restaurant that I had to choose (as a reminder every week my boyfriend and I chose a restaurant that serves cuisine based on a letter of the alphabet and we have already done "A" to "D" and now was the week of "E"). Before we went to Verru, my boyfriend told me he thought I would take him to an Eritrean or an Ethiopian restaurant but when I told him to meet me near Bond Street station he changed his mind to Egyptian. None of these guesses were right and instead I had stumbled upon what looked like to be an Estonian restaurant!!!

Maija rated:

Location:

Last week was my boyfriends turn to choose a restaurant that serves cuisine that starts with the letter D. As there are not that many countries that start with the letter D, I had kind of guessed he would be taking me to a Danish restaurant, as I thought it would probably be impossible to find a Djibouti or a Dominican Republic restaurant even in London which has almost everything. And I was right; boyfriend had booked a Danish restaurant called Madsen, which is located by the South Kensington tube station.

Maija rated:

Location:

I went to Oslo with my friend Lasma to visit my friend Hans Peter and see the city. Hans Peter recommended we go for lunch to Ekeberg Restaurant, due to the view and as it was quite famous (eating there is ranked as the 9th best thing to do in Oslo by the Lonely Planet guide). The white building where the Ekeberg restaurant is located sits on a hill among the green forest and overlooks the Oslofjord, the islands and boats, as well as the city of Oslo. The building was designed by Oslovian Lars Backer and was completed in 1929, and it was said to be one of the foremost Functionalist buildings in Europe. By the end of the 1990s, the restaurant was closed, but it has re-opened recently and been redecorated and the classic features have been retained from 1929. The view from here of the Oslofjord was said to have inspired Edvard Munch in the creation of his masterpiece, The Scream

Maija rated:

Location:

I remember going to Baltic restaurant a few years ago thinking they were going to be serving Baltic (as in Latvian, Estonian and Lithuanian) food, but the name is slightly misleading as they seem to serve mainly Polish food with a slight hint of Scandinavian food, and also some Russian dishes (the link here seems to be countries around the Baltic sea apart from the Baltic states). The best thing about this place is the amazingly huge vodka selection especially from Poland, here you can get all brands and all flavour vodkas (I had a delicious strawberry vodka shot).

Maija rated:

3.00

Hungry Bee Maija Restaurant blog

A Latvian girl who works in finance but has a deep passion for food! She lives to eat! :)

The website aims to share her thoughts on many of the meals she has had around the world and all the places she has visited, from michellin ranked and best restaurants in the world to casual, cool and quite cheap places.

Ratings

Maija assigns restaurants rating ranging from m (very bad) to MMMMM (very good) so the more "M"s a restaurants gets the better. Small "m"s mean half points. Note Maija gives a high rating based on the overall experience in the restaurant and also based on how delicious and enjoyable the meal was and not based on the quality or price of ingredients.